It is common for entities (i.e., individuals or institutions) that are separately involved in the manufacturing, selling, utilizing and servicing of objects to separately possess information about such objects that may be of use to other entities. Conversely, entities that could benefit from access to certain types of object-related information routinely cannot obtain such information because it is in the possession of other entities with which they have no regular channel of communication. Entities are often required to go through time consuming and burdensome steps to obtain information about objects possessed by other entities.
The resulting inefficiencies are manifested in numerous ways. Companies that embed sensors in their equipment often do not have the capability to exploit that data for improved business results. For example, many industrial equipment manufacturers equip their products to provide Global Positioning System (GPS) data, but are typically unable to use such data in a meaningful way. As an extension of this problem, dynamic process interactions are often not conducted with the greatest possible efficiency. For example, underutilized truck fleets are a common occurrence because freight customers are often not aware of available cargo space.
In another scenario, a company's lack of knowledge about how customers use that company's products prevents that company from improving its product design and customer service. Further still, a lack of structured and aggregated information about certain types of objects can lead to further inefficiencies, e.g., lack of information about device status and usage can lead to faulty or redundant warranty claims.
As a particular example of these problems, consider that a bus manufacturer may possess information regarding a given bus' manufacturing history. The bus itself may contain information such as engine error codes, and the owner of the bus may possess warranty information and service contacts. In order to repair the bus, the owner of the bus may have to research warranty information and service contacts, and a service center may have to read error codes and contact the manufacturer for information about the product history. All of these steps increase the downtime of the bus and reduce the overall efficiency of the bus. Moreover, the bus manufacturer has an incomplete view of the bus and its use because the error codes and other usage data are not available to them, resulting in poor customer service and poor product design.
Recently, Microsoft Corporation announced its plans for its .NET My Services (formerly code-named “Hailstorm”) web-based services. .NET My Services will provide a platform for unifying an individual's data across devices and making the data accessible to the user and to other services in a secure fashion. Organized around individual users, rather than the devices that such users may use, .NET My Services will function to deliver personally relevant information through the Internet to a user, to software running on the user's behalf, or to devices working for the user. In implementation, .NET My Services will rely on Microsoft's Passport service to provide user identification. The user controls access to and usage of information associated with his or her identity. As designed, .NET My Services platform uses an open access model thereby allowing use with any device, application or service, regardless of the underlying platform, operating system, object model, programming language or network provider. All .NET My Services are XML (Extensible Markup Language) Web services, which are based on the open industry standards of XML and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol).
Also, the MIT Auto-ID Center provides a strategy for assigning unique identifiers to each object, or product, in existence. This strategy manifests itself in the form of Electronic Product Codes (EPCs) that can be assigned to give each object a unique identity. The EPC works with the Object Naming Service (ONS) and tells computer systems where to find information about any object that carries an EPC code. The ONS is based in part on the Internet's existing Domain Name System (DNS), which routes information to appropriate web sites. The ONS would allow computer systems to find a physical markup language (PML) file for each item with an EPC.
While it is anticipated that the .NET My Services platform will represent an advance in the management of data of individuals, it fails to address the management of object-related data. Furthermore, although EPCs will likely serve well to uniquely identify objects and relate them to a specific PML description of that object, they fail to offer object-centric services that allow objects to interact with the world. As objects become increasingly capable of generating their own data and requesting services, the need for such object-related information management will likewise increase. Therefore, a need exists for methods and systems that provide a central point for hosting and managing object-related information as well as receiving and distributing object-related information to and from a plurality of entities.